I agree with Stan. It's good that foreigners can mention a name, and it's good if they can sit-in and make suggestions, but I feel the Korean staff should be making the decisions.

My reasons are various.

1. A co-worker interviewed at a "top" university in Seoul, and was berated by the foreign staff member for having the nerve to work at a school outside of Seoul. This lady just could not wrap her head around the idea that someone with his qualifications would even bother to do so. Obviously, this woman is a complete idiot.

2. Another co-worker interviewed at a different "top" university in Seoul, and never got a call-back after his 2nd interview. Finally, he got one. It was a foreigner who called him, and my co-worker explained that he had never received a call. The foreigner on the line got all snooty, like a spoiled child, and began ranting, "YES YOU DID! It says right here in our records that you received a call-back, but you did not respond. Why did you not respond? Aren't you serious about this job.!?" (I'm paraphrasing a bit there, but that's basically what went down). My co-worker was so turned-off on the place he told them to forget about it, and took the job with us.

3. Another school has several staff members who are gay, and they give preference to other gay friends. The staff at that school is now about 60% gay, and climbing. The Korean staff has no idea, but you can about imagine what would happen if they found out.

4. Certain individuals of certain nationalities make it a goal to hire people from their country only, believing that "their" brand of English is best.

5. The temptation to hire like-minded friends (who they know will end up taking the same side in internal disputes later) is just too much for many foreigners to deal with. Korea is a small country, and the pool of foreign teachers moreso. Friends hire friends, and sometimes those friends -- quite frankly -- aren't the best choices.

For these reasons, and others, I honestly don't feel as if foreigners should have too much input in the process.

I agree with Stan. It's good that foreigners can mention a name, and it's good if they can sit-in and make suggestions, but I feel the Korean staff should be making the decisions.

My reasons are various.

1. A co-worker interviewed at a "top" university in Seoul, and was berated by the foreign staff member for having the nerve to work at a school outside of Seoul. This lady just could not wrap her head around the idea that someone with his qualifications would even bother to do so. Obviously, this woman is a complete idiot.

2. Another co-worker interviewed at a different "top" university in Seoul, and never got a call-back after his 2nd interview. Finally, he got one. It was a foreigner who called him, and my co-worker explained that he had never received a call. The foreigner on the line got all snooty, like a spoiled child, and began ranting, "YES YOU DID! It says right here in our records that you received a call-back, but you did not respond. Why did you not respond? Aren't you serious about this job.!?" (I'm paraphrasing a bit there, but that's basically what went down). My co-worker was so turned-off on the place he told them to forget about it, and took the job with us.

3. Another school has several staff members who are gay, and they give preference to other gay friends. The staff at that school is now about 60% gay, and climbing. The Korean staff has no idea, but you can about imagine what would happen if they found out.

4. Certain individuals of certain nationalities make it a goal to hire people from their country only, believing that "their" brand of English is best.

5. The temptation to hire like-minded friends (who they know will end up taking the same side in internal disputes later) is just too much for many foreigners to deal with. Korea is a small country, and the pool of foreign teachers moreso. Friends hire friends, and sometimes those friends -- quite frankly -- aren't the best choices.

For these reasons, and others, I honestly don't feel as if foreigners should have too much input in the process.

I know of a "top" university in Seoul who has a foreign hiring committee that is 100% composed of left wing Americans Democrats who have a serious dislike for conservative thinking people particularly Republican Americans. The will not even consider a person if they detect a hint of conservative leanings. One interview with an American who they learned was a Republican supporter turned into shouting match about the evils of George Bush.

At the same school the women on the committee will also reject applicants whose appearance might "frighten the students." The Koreans have no idea this is going on.

As these position updates continue to roll in, I'm increasingly shocked and exceptionally glad that I got out of the ESL thing when I did. I just read the post on Woosong University.

Keep this in mind: In 1999, yup, 13 years ago, I was getting 2.5 plus housing and fully paid winter/summer breaks; no camps, no cafes, and a 3 or 4 day a week schedule with block shifts.

I'd have to go way, way back to some of my original posts, but I believe some of us on the board called it a long time ago. We intuned that Korean universities would eventually be insisting on the MA for ESL teaching slots and that pay and conditions would stagnate or deteriorate. This was a derived from what happened in Japan and on trending at universities in Seoul.

My understanding is that there are still a smathering of decent university positions out there, but that the competition for them has sky rocketed. If you have a good job at good pay, hang on and hang on tight! On more than one instance over the years there have been house cleanings at universities large and small for any number of reasons. I expect that will continue.

The examples that swampfox has given are indeed shitty and unprofessional; no question. There's no denying that it happens, and it can't and shouldn't be defended.

However, this is not a reason to assume all foreign hiring committees suffer from the same idiocy, yet that is what has happened in this thread. Look around, and you'll find stories of unprofessional hiring committees staffed completely by Koreans - if we were to be consistent, we would have to decry the use of Koreans on hiring committees as well.

All I did was offer my own perspective that our school does well in its hiring, and avoids any of the bullshit mentioned in swampfox's post (which is not to say it has always done so, I have no idea, but at the moment it is running well). That is my perspective. The fact that this has drawn such a vitriolic denunciation is surprising, to say the least.